


at first and fierce affirming sight

by asterismal (asterisms)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (sort of anyway), Alternate Universe - No Voldemort, Creature Tom Riddle, F/F, Female Harry Potter, Female Tom Riddle, Forest Ranger Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26248675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asterisms/pseuds/asterismal
Summary: She sees the tail first.It’s exactly like Colin said—the tail of a giant snake curling over the hillside, deep green and glittering in the sunlight that manages to break through the cloud cover.Harry works at a sanctuary for magical creatures, and Tom comes to visit. Written forthis stunning artin the tomarry reverse bang
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 17
Kudos: 345
Collections: Tomarry Reverse Big Bang 2020





	at first and fierce affirming sight

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was such a pleasure to write! Thank you to the artist I was paired with for the lovely inspiration and the opportunity to write more femslash for this ship :)) 
> 
> The accompanying (beautiful, stunning, perfect) artwork by okunichh can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26254579)

The sun is rising by the time Harry starts heading back to the lodge.

As the pale light of dawn spills across the sky, she drops her pack to the ground, abandoning the trail in favor of finding a tree tall enough to see from. When she succeeds, she climbs it as quickly as she can, grimacing as its bark scrapes her palms and her hair (short as it may be) tangles in the branches.

This, she tells herself as she does her best to ignore the tugging at her scalp, is why she no longer climbs trees the way she used to.

Eventually, finally, she climbs high enough to see the sky unobstructed.

She clings to the swaying branches, breathes in the cool, damp air and watches the horizon. Before her eyes, deep blues and violets give way to red, then orange, then gold as the sun rises over the distant hills.

Over the peaks to the north, she can see a storm crawling closer.

She’s been here for five years, now—six, soon. Too many, and perhaps not enough.

Maybe it’ll never be enough.

Still, for all her years, it’s a sight she thinks she’ll never get used to.

When enough time has passed that she’s starting to shiver, she knows it’s time to get back to work. She looks down. A fall from this height would break her legs, at the very least. Maybe it’d even kill her. The safest option would be to climb down. Slowly.

But, well. She wasn’t a Gryffindor for nothing.

She jumps.

With magic’s aid, she leaps far enough from the tree that when she falls, she falls into open air rather than the branches below. For a few breathless moments, she’s in freefall—she thinks she could chase this feeling forever. Then she catches herself, a wordless spell slowing her descent until she lands on her knees beside her pack with barely a sound at all.

Laughing at herself, she tips over onto her side and rolls onto her back, lying spread-eagle on the ground as she stares up at the sky through the branches.

It’s going to rain soon.

She should try to get back to the lodge before it does, she knows, but she doesn’t want to leave. It’s nice, here in the middle of nowhere—nothing to hear but the sound of wind passing through the leaves and trees older than anything else she knows creaking as they sway. She closes her eyes and breathes in, lets the scent of growing things—bright and clean—and the oncoming storm pool over her tongue.

If she isn’t careful, she might fall asleep here.

With a heavy sigh, she pushes herself to her feet, stretching her arms over her head as she rises up onto her toes. She bends to grab her pack, slings it across her shoulders, and then she sets off for the lodge again.

If she hurries, she might even make it back for breakfast.

Almost an hour later, she curses as she stumbles over a pair of boots just inside the door. She kicks them aside, glaring as she sheds her coat and shivers at the warmth that surrounds her—a far cry from the morning air outside.

“Morning, Harry!”

Harry grins at Colin as she drops into a crouch to unlace her boots. He looks tired, like he just woke up. She pushes her hair from her eyes, then asks, “Shouldn’t you be out at the lake?”

She could’ve sworn he had an early shift today.

He laughs, then follows behind her as she rises, depositing her boots in their proper cubby before heading for the dining hall. She can imagine the sheepish look on his face when he says, “I switched with Rolf. Luna and I were up late last night.”

Harry grins at him over her shoulder. “Oh?”

He punches her arm, and she dodges out of reach, laughing. “Shut up,” he says, flushed. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Alright, fine,” she says, holding up her hands in surrender. “I won’t tease.”

“Good,” he mutters, knocking his shoulder against hers. She lets him knock her aside where she might have once planted her feet.

“Where is Luna, anyway?” she asks.

“With the centaurs.”

Harry hums in acknowledgement. “Hagrid mentioned a couple more had joined Bane’s herd the other day. S’probably for the best that she’s the one to greet them.”

Then they reach the kitchen, and all thoughts of Luna and centaurs fall away in favor of stacking their plates with food and jockeying for a spot at one of the tables in the dining hall. Harry lands a seat across from Hagrid, who greets her cheerfully as ever as he passes the pumpkin juice her way.

“How’s the forest doin’?” he asks once she’s settled.

“It’s doing well,” Harry tells him, using her fork to poke at the yolk on one of her eggs. “A storm’s on its way, but everyone should be able to handle it.”

Hagrid looks pleased, but then, he should be. After leaving the groundskeeper position, it was his idea to work with Mr. Scamander and make this place into what it is today. “Good ter hear.”

“Mhm.” Harry stuffs a forkful of sausage, egg, and mushroom into her mouth, chewing happily. She swallows and says, “I heard that Luna’s out with the centaurs. I would’ve gone to check on them myself, but, well…”

Hagrid shakes his head, likely remembering the last time Harry had to spend any time in the company of centaurs. His dark eyes glitter with laughter as he says, “It’s probably best tha’ you didn’t.”

From there, the conversation moves easily to her plans for the rest of the day. Hagrid reaches over the table to clap her shoulder in thanks when she volunteers to make sure the hippogriffs and the manticore pair that showed up to the sanctuary last summer—a surprise to everyone, considering this is hardly their ideal habitat—haven’t torn each other to shreds yet. She has to plant an arm on the table lest he knock her face first into her food.

She waves his thanks away easily.

Even if her peers _were_ willing to take on the job, she’d be happy to do it herself.

She’s always had a thing for the more dangerous jobs. They ease some of the restlessness that plagues her. Also, they’re usually the most fun.

It’s probably why she and Hagrid get along so well.

The snakes find her later that day.

She’s just gotten done with delivering new fertilizer for the bowtruckles and their grove, and she’s trying with little success to pick the leaves and burs they’ve left as thanks out of her hair. It’s slow work, made even slower by the pack of jarveys that have been harassing her for about half an hour now, calling out for help in human voices and cackling each time her head jerks to follow the noise.

She hears one scream behind her and flinches, rolling her eyes as another round of laughter starts.

“I’m glad this is entertaining for you,” she says dryly, picking at the leaf she lost hold of in her surprise.

“Entertaining!” the jarveys echo as they rustle through the bushes that surround the tree stump she’s claimed as her perch. “You!”

She huffs and mutters, too quietly for them to hear, “Exactly so.”

Thankfully, the end to her torment announces itself with a loud hiss, and the jarveys scatter, chattering to themselves as they go.

Harry perks up. _“Hello?”_ she calls, slipping easily into parseltongue.

An adder slithers into view. _“Greetings, speaker,”_ it says as she bends to offer her arm. It coils around her, happily leeching her body heat. _“We come with information.”_

 _“I look forward to hearing it,”_ she says with a grin.

Last time a snake came to find her, it was to complain about the puffskeins that showed up last month—how fast they are, how bothersome their fur is. It had sulked around her neck for days when she told it she couldn’t just get rid of them, that it'd need to learn to share its home with the irritating creatures.

She’s eager to hear what they’ve come up with this time.

Three more snakes join her on her stump—two grass snakes and a runespoor (who chose to remain in the forest rather than return to its natural habitat when it learned she could speak).

 _“A snake is coming,”_ the runespoor’s middle head tells her.

Harry raises an eyebrow. That’s hardly news, she thinks, there are snakes all over the forest. _“What kind of snake?”_ she asks.

The grass snakes speak as one, _“The biggest!”_

The biggest snake Harry knows of is a basilisk. After discovering one hibernating beneath the school in her second year—an incident that only barely didn’t end in anyone’s death—Harry isn’t eager to meet another one.

 _“A king snake?”_ she asks, wary.

Each of the runespoor’s heads lets out a hissing laugh. _“Even the eldest of the king snakes is but a hatchling,”_ the center head tells her, nudging beneath her chin as it coils over her shoulders, _“compared to the biggest snake.”_

Harry’s eyes widen.

That… really doesn’t sound good.

But this place was made to offer a home to all misplaced beings, even—and perhaps especially—the dangerous ones. _“The biggest snake is welcome here,”_ Harry says, and though she doubts the snakes would have noticed it anyway (at least, none but the runespoor), she’s careful to keep any reluctance from her tone.

This time, the adder lets out an amused hiss, tightening around her arm as it tells her, _“There is nothing that could stop her where she isn’t.”_

 _“We will tell her anyway,”_ one of the grass snakes says.

The other says, _“She will be pleased to know it.”_

Apparently, this is all they have to say to her, and the adder and the grass snakes slither from the stump, disappearing back into the forest. The runespoor, however, stays. Harry strokes her fingers over its scales as she thinks.

 _“You worry, speaker,”_ the runespoor’s left head says.

She nods, seeing no reason to deny it. _“This place is home to many,”_ she says. _“If they’re threatened…”_

_“The biggest snake has no terriroty. She will not fight.”_

Harry’s never heard of such a creature—even the gentle ones compete for resources—but she’s willing to believe it exists. _“Good,”_ she says. _“I would fight her if she did.”_

At this, all three of the runespoor’s heads hiss, and she knows she’s being laughed at. _“You could try,”_ the head on the right tells her.

 _“You would fail,”_ the left head says.

That said, the runespoor unwinds itself from around her body, dropping to the forest floor. As it vanishes into the undergrowth, Harry frowns, uncrossing her legs. Though she won’t admit it to anyone, the thought of a creature she can’t fight if she needs to makes her nervous. Maybe the runespoor is exaggerating, but snakes have always, in her experience, been literal creatures. 

Still frowning, she stands, doing her best to push her conversation with the snakes out of her mind. She still has a few kilometers to patrol—and food supplies to survey—and she should get back to it soon if she wants to be done in time for a shower before dinner.

She’ll tell Hagrid the news when she gets back.

Until then, she has work to do.

Their new guest arrives nearly a week later, on one of the rare days that Harry hasn’t been assigned a shift until late afternoon. Because of this, she’d intended to sleep in until at least eleven, but her dreams refused to cooperate.

She’s been up since four.

Eventually, she gets tired of lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling as she tries to remember anything other than a strange heat and the feeling of being watched. She heads downstairs so she can stare at the wall of the dining room instead. 

Which means she’s the first to know when Colin arrives.

He appears in the middle of the room with a loud crack—this alone tells her it’s urgent, as they’re encouraged not to apparate in case they destabilize the spells holding the place together.

“Colin?” she asks, already standing.

“Harry, thank Merlin,” Colin says as he rushes to her side, grabbing her hands and pulling her around the table toward the front hall. “You have to see this.”

Before she can even think to protest, he drags her from the hall and out the door, barely giving her time to shove her feet into her boots before he’s dragging her outside.

“What are—Colin, slow down!” she says, tugging at his hold.

He stumbles to a halt, and she gets a good look at his face when he turns to her. His eyes are wide. His face is flushed. “But there’s no time—”

She breaks his hold and grabs him by the shoulders, squeezing. “Explain.”

After a deep breath, he does. “I was checking the northern barrier like Hagrid asked when I saw it, the biggest snake tail I’ve ever seen!” Harry narrows her eyes, and he trips over his words to finish before she can interrupt. “But it wasn’t a snake. It was a woman! A giant one, with the tail of a snake instead of legs.”

Harry hopes the look in her eyes is as dead as she feels. “Bullshit.”

“It’s true,” Colin insists, wringing his hands like he’s desperate for his camera. “Go see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

She wants to deny it and go back inside, to maybe give sleep another try, she really does. But then she remembers the snakes and the warning they gave. This is probably what they meant.

“North?” she asks, resigned to the long flight.

Colin nods, and she lets out a heaving sigh, tilting her head back to look up at the clouds. If this turns out to be true, she’ll be ecstatic. At least, she will once she’s awake enough to feel anything at all. For now, however, the entire world is an annoyance—Colin especially—and this is the last thing she wants to deal with.

And yet.

“Alright, fine,” she says. She holds out one hand, summons one of the brooms they use when they need to get somewhere quickly. “If this is a joke—”

“It isn’t.”

“—I’m going to find your stash of chocolate frogs and eat them all.”

Colin gapes at her. “How did you—?”

Before he can finish his question, the broom smacks into her hand, and she mounts it, kicking off of the ground with a wave, already feeling much better about her morning.

She sees the tail first.

It’s exactly like Colin said—the tail of a giant snake curling over the hillside, deep green and glittering in the sunlight that manages to break through the cloud cover.

She lands before she gets too close, deciding it’s probably best to approach on foot, where such a large being will no doubt be less likely to notice her, rather than in the air, where there’s nowhere to hide. She approaches quietly, but the closer she gets, the less cover there is, and by the time she can see the being’s giant torso, she’s resigned herself to crouching in the bushes like a creep.

Again, she sees Colin was telling the truth.

Stretched out across the swaying grass is a giant woman with the tail of a snake.

She wears no coverings but her hair, which is dark and long enough to cover her breasts and pool along the ground at her back. The skin above her scales is pale, almost shockingly so.

And her face…

Harry swallows, unable to help the way her gaze tracks hungrily over the flat panes of her face, over her dark brows and slit nose, over her thin lips.

She’s never seen such a being.

She wants to move closer, so she does. Carefully, quietly, she sets her broom on the ground and makes her way across the hill. The woman shifts, then, and Harry freezes, holding her breath. Waiting. When her eyes snap open, she gasps; her eyes are red, like blood in shadow.

She’s looking at Harry.

When she moves, sitting up, Harry stumbles back, almost falling to her knees.

Then one giant hand reaches for her, and Harry’s eyes widen as she tries and fails to scramble away as long fingers wrap around her body, lifting her into the air. It’s nothing like flying. She forces herself to keep breathing, clutching at the hand holding her like her grip might do anything at all.

Her skin is warm beneath Harry’s palms.

“Hello,” the woman says in a warm, low voice. Somehow, it’s not at all what she expected to hear. “Have you come to pay tribute?”

“Have I—What?” Harry gapes, feeling remarkably lost. Then she sees the woman smirk and feels her temper flare as she snaps, “No. Put me down.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because.” Harry sputters. “Because picking someone up without their permission is _rude.”_

“But you’re such a small creature,” the woman says, and Harry kicks at her palm, though she isn’t even sure she feels it. “How else would we speak?”

“Well.” Okay, Harry thinks, she’s got a point. “Fine, you can keep holding me. But I’m not here to pay any sort of tribute.”

“Mm,” the being says, leaning back on one elbow, holding Harry in front of her face. This close, Harry can feel her breath as she speaks. “What a shame that is.”

“A shame?” Harry asks, frowning.

The woman lets out a rumbling laugh. “A great shame indeed,” she says. Her hold grows tighter, but not bruising. Still, Harry holds herself as still as she can. “Tribute from one such as yourself would be the greatest of pleasures.”

Harry can feel her cheeks begin to flush.

She clears her throat, pretends she’s unaffected. “Well, no, sorry. I came to…to say hello, I suppose.” The woman smiles, and Harry clings tighter to the finger wrapped over her ribs, a thrill of nerves rising through her at the sight of those sharp teeth so close. She says, “The snakes told me you were coming.”

 _“You speak?”_ the woman asks.

Harry only stares; she’s only ever heard the language from snakes before, but she finds she likes the way it sounds on this woman’s tongue. She scowls at the thought, at the ridiculousness of it all, and says, _“I do.”_

“How interesting,” the woman says. “It’s been many years since I met a speaker this far north.” She tilts her head, and her hair shifts. Harry very carefully doesn’t look down. While she has no doubt that human standards of politeness don’t exactly apply here, it would feel rude to stare when they’re having a conversation. The woman doesn’t appear to notice her struggle. “Well then, speaker, won’t you tell me what this place is?”

Harry is relieved by the question.

Introducing their magically maintained plot of land is part of her job, after all. Sure, dealing with the occasional human visitor is her least favorite part, but at least she’s reasonably comfortable doing it. “You’ve entered a sanctuary,” she says. “A pocket dimension, of sorts, made to offer safe harbor to any being or creature who wants it.”

“Ah, yes. I felt the spells as I passed through them.”

“Erm.” Harry hesitates. “Would you like to know more about them?”

“No, I don’t think I would. Only assure me that they work.”

Harry nods. “They do.”

The woman stares at her then, appearing deep in thought. Eventually, she says, “The snakes told me I would be welcome here. Is this still true?”

“It is,” Harry says.

Even if it wasn’t, she remembers the runespoor’s parting words. She doubts she could keep this being away if she tried.

“Excellent,” she says, looking pleased. “Tell me, what is your name?”

“Harriet,” she says without thinking, then flushes and adds, “but, erm. Please, call me Harry.”

 _“Harry,”_ she echoes, and Harry finds she likes the sound of her name coming from her lips. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Harry. You may call me Tom.”

Tom.

What a simple name for such a being.

“Alright, Tom,” Harry says, shrugging away the thought. It’s time to do her job. Hagrid, after all, will want to know everything. “How long will you be staying?”

It’s not a question she often asks.

Most of the creatures calling this place home can’t speak to answer it.

The woman—Tom, she reminds herself—smiles and says only, “However long it takes.”

Harry goes back the next day.

It’s a rare day with no clouds at all to block the sun, and she finds Tom basking in its rays, her face tilted upward. For a long moment, Harry hovers on her broom, staring.

Then, as Tom’s eyes open just enough to catch her, she flies closer.

Tom offers her hand. She hesitates just long enough for one dark eyebrow to rise before she touches down, feeling oddly vulnerable—unsteady—for all that Tom is unlikely to let her fall. Slowly, so she doesn’t lose her footing, Tom settles her hand upon her chest, her fingers curled to keep Harry in place.

“Hello, speaker,” she says, her eyes falling shut again. “What brings you to my hill?”

“You,” Harry says, perhaps a bit too quickly.

She feels like an idiot as soon as she says it. Tom chuckles beneath her, and that doesn’t really help. “What about me?” she asks.

And, well. She’s already revealed too much; why not more?

She says—plainly, honestly—“Everything.”

This time, Tom doesn’t laugh. She opens her eyes, tilts her head to meet Harry’s gaze. “You would like to know me better,” she says, and it isn’t a question.

Harry answers anyway. “I would.”

Tom smiles at her, and her eyes squint with her pleasure. “Good.”

In the weeks that follow, Harry visits Tom often. While she would hardly call herself obsessed, she’s certain Ron and Hermione would say otherwise if they knew how often Tom occupied her thoughts. Any spare moment she has—moments she once spent losing herself among the trees, exploring every corner of her newest home—she now spends in Tom’s company.

She’s fascinating, even more so than Harry first thought.

She knows so much.

Harry could listen—has listened—to her speak for hours without once growing bored. But perhaps the best thing of all is that when Harry wants to talk instead, Tom lets her. Tom listens.

And so Harry talks more than she has in years, about things she’s never spoken of before.

She likes it.

And it’s odd, Harry thinks, that out of everyone she’s ever met, it’s this singular being, unlike anything else in the world, who feels the most familiar.

If Harry was a pessimist— Well.

Perhaps she is, because she thinks this might be a problem. But she isn’t sure. And Harry has never been one to run from her problems, prefers to face them head on, but this… It’s so new. She’s never felt like this before.

She needs to think—she needs time, space.

And for a while, she gets it.

Then the snakes start following her. For the most part, they’re easy to ignore. They don’t speak to her. They only watch. They’ve never done something like this before—there is only one probable cause.

It says something about her, she knows, that she’s pleased to see how her absence has been noticed.

The dreams, however.

These are not so easy to ignore.

She’s been having them for weeks, but in the time she’s spent away from Tom, they’ve gotten worse. Or, rather, more distinct, because she can’t quite decide if she dislikes them. 

Every night, they start the same.

Darkness.

Heat.

She turns over onto her back, shivering at the slide of her bare skin against the smooth, solid warmth beneath her. She sighs—her chest rises, falls—and the thing beneath her moves too, like it’s breathing with her.

Her eyes open slowly.

She feels like she’s floating, like nothing can touch her. When she presses one hand to the mass, she knows she isn’t floating at all. There are scales beneath her palm. Her fingers clutch for purchase as she arches into the coils.

She feels eyes on her, watching.

This doesn’t bother her like she thinks it should. She turns her head, rubs her cheek against smooth scales and looks up, recognizes that searching gaze, that pale face.

“Tom,” she says, sighs.

The coils shift beneath her, and with a hiss, she wakes.

She wakes gasping, sitting up in bed with her hands clutched in her sheets.

It’s too hot.

She kicks her sheets away and rolls out of bed, curling her toes as her bare feet hit the floor. She stumbles across her room to press her forehead against the window.

When she breathes, the glass fogs.

“What the hell?” she says to herself, shivering as cool air leaks in past the window and touches her sweat-damp skin. She rubs at her arms, grimacing.

She grabs one of her discarded shirts from her floor and pulls it on, slipping into her shorts before padding silently from her room and into the hall. As she makes her way to the bathroom, carefully avoiding the spots on the floor that creak, she tells herself that the feeling of being watched is just a leftover from her dream, that it’s nothing.

She almost believes it.

When she flicks on the bathroom light, she stares wide-eyed at her reflection in the mirror.

There’s sweat at her temples.

Her face is flushed, brown skin doing little to disguise the heat she feels when she presses her face into her hands.

Her hair is a mess. This, at least, she can fix. She runs her fingers through it, wincing when they catch in the tangles as she tries to make it fall somewhat flat against her head.

Eventually, she gives up.

If she had to guess, she’d say it was nearing three in the morning—far too early to shower and risk waking the others with the obnoxiously loud pipes. Then again, anyone who doesn’t have silencing charms up by now is asking to be woken at odd hours.

She turns the water on.

After, with the sweat washed from her skin and her wet hair carefully detangled by hand, she feels better.

The first thing she does when she gets back to her room is strip her sheets from the bed, tossing them onto the chair at her desk to wash later. She could use a spell, of course, but it never really feels the same.

She won’t be getting any more sleep tonight.

Even if she made the trip down to the couches in the lounge, she doubts sleep would come. So for a while, she only stands there in the center of her room, her hair dripping onto her forehead and shoulders as she considers her options.

In the end, it isn’t really a decision.

She changes into something warmer and grabs a thicker coat than usual from the back of her wardrobe. Then she heads out into the hall once more.

She’s going to visit Tom.

If Tom is surprised to see her, she doesn’t show it. “Hello, speaker,” she says, her eyes squinting open as soon as Harry is within grabbing range.

She offers her palm.

Harry considers staying on her broom then decides it wouldn’t be worth it. She steps into the cradle of Tom’s hand and wonders if she’ll ever get used to the way it feels.

“I dreamt of you,” is how she chooses to reply. Only after she says it does it occur to her that this might not be the best way to start a conversation.

Tom grins, her teeth glinting in the moonlight, and Harry gets the feeling she’s being laughed at. “Was it a good dream?”

Harry gapes at her, eyes wide.

 _Was_ it a good dream?

She honestly can’t decide.

“That’s—” She cuts herself off, looks away to glare out into the darkness as she says, chin in the air, “That’s none of your business.”

“Isn’t it?” Tom asks, lowering her hand to her chest, so that it rises and falls as she breathes. Harry sways with the motion, decides against dropping to her knees for all that it might make balancing easier. When Harry doesn’t answer, she sighs. “Very well, but at least tell me this: was it a bad one?”

This question is easier to answer. Harry clears her throat, then says, “No.”

Tom grins again. “Good.”

For a long moment, they stay this way—Harry standing on Tom’s palm, watching Tom watch her through lidded eyes. Eventually, she asks, “Were you sleeping?”

Tom hums, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. “No, not quite. I was merely… drifting.”

“Oh.” Harry rubs the back of her neck, feeling sheepish, suddenly. In the cold, open air, her dream no longer feels worth the bother. “Well, I’m sorry for interrupting.”

“Don’t be. I like your company.”

And for all that the air truly is cold, Harry feels flushed with warmth, suddenly. “Oh,” she says again, wishing she’d brought her scarf so she could hide her face in it. “Good.”

“Tell me, Harry.” As always, she feels herself perk up when Tom says her name. “Do you like my company?”

This question, too, is easy to answer. That’s the problem.

Or maybe it isn’t a problem at all. “I do.”

Tom opens her eyes, and Harry shivers, but not from the cold, when she feels that ancient, blood red gaze settle upon her again.

She has the dangerous thought that she’d like that gaze on her forever.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Tom says, as though Harry isn’t undergoing a series of revelations before her eyes. “Others came to visit me while you were away, and I found them far less pleasant.”

Harry tries not to preen at the confession.

“You mean you didn’t enjoy their awe at seeing you for the first time?” she teases to distract herself.

She gets the feeling Tom would roll her eyes if it wasn’t so undignified. “While the worship of humans _is_ my due, I confess it gets old as the centuries pass.”

Harry’s breath catches.

She knew Tom must be old, but… “Centuries?”

Tom grins. “Does that frighten you?”

“No,” Harry says, voice faint as she tries to imagine what that must be like. She finds she can’t quite manage it. “I just… Do you ever get tired of it?”

“Oh, constantly,” Tom says with a sigh, and Harry isn’t quite sure how genuine she’s being. “After all, the world is often so tedious.”

“And now?”

Tom tilts her head. “Hmm?”

“Is it tedious now?”

Tom is silent, considering. “No,” she says. This time, Harry thinks she means it. “No, not now.”

“You know, Harry,” Luna says to her later that day, kicking her feet in one of the ponds near the foot of Tom’s chosen hill, “there are stories about your Tom—”

Harry glares, flustered by the description. “She isn’t _my_ Tom.”

Luna carries on as though she hadn’t said a thing. “—and others like her.”

She thinks of ignoring it, she really does, but her curiosity gets the best of her. As always. “What kinds of stories?” she asks.

Luna looks over her shoulder, to where Harry is stretched out on her back in the grass behind her, and grins. “Humans—muggle and magical alike—used to worship them. They would go to them for aid, for blessings.”

“Huh.” Harry folds her hands together over her stomach. “Actually, that explains a lot. She asked if I came to pay tribute when we met.”

“Hmm. It’s a good thing you didn’t, I think.” When she sees Harry’s curious frown, she continues. “Help wasn’t always given.”

Right, Harry thinks.

Of course it wasn’t. She can’t imagine Tom was ever the type to give blessings. It’s far easier to picture her leaving ruin in her wake.

That probably shouldn’t be as appealing as it is.

“Most people don’t believe they exist today,” Luna says, breaking her out of her spiraling thoughts about Tom’s appeal and how Harry really needs to get better at resisting it.

“Would you?”

“Hmm?”

“If Tom hadn’t come,” Harry explains. “Would you believe the stories were real?”

Luna takes a moment to think, then nods. “I think so,” she says. “Most stories are, you know, even if it’s not in the ways we expect.”

Fair enough, Harry thinks, then leaves it at that.

“She isn’t a god though,” she says eventually. When Luna makes a curious noise, she says, “She’s just a person, really.” Then, before Luna can comment on that like she knows she wants to, she asks, “Have you visited her?”

“Oh, no,” she says, serene. “I told my dad all about her, and he said it was probably best if I stayed away.”

“What?” Harry sits up. “Why?”

Luna scoots away from the pond and turns so she’s sitting facing Harry, crossing her legs beneath her. “Daddy says people like your Tom used to steal maidens from their beds, never to be seen again.” She smiles and says, “It’s nice, here; I don’t think I want to be stolen just yet.”

“But, why?” Harry asks, frowning. “What would they steal a maiden for?”

Surely, humans are too small for…

She shakes her head, banishing the thought.

Luna only shrugs. “I’m not sure. But I think it’s far more likely that people chose to go, rather than being stolen.”

Harry blinks, startled by the idea. “Why?”

Luna looks at her then, and Harry remembers once more that her friend is far more perceptive than she often lets on when she asks, “Wouldn’t you?”

Harry opens her mouth—to protest, to defend herself, she doesn’t know—then closes it again. She looks down, tugs at a clump of grass without pulling it from the dirt.

Maybe she would.

“Have you ever stolen a maiden?” Harry asks the next time she sees Tom, because she can’t get the thought out of her head.

She’s being ridiculous, she knows, and yet…

It only occurs to her after she asks that Tom might be insulted by the question. Luckily, she only feels the familiar vibration of Tom’s laugh beneath her. “I have not,” she says. “I’m afraid I was never very interested in the games my sisters used to play.”

“And… would you steal one now?”

Harry doesn’t know why she’s asking, except, of course, she does.

So in the moments it takes Tom to consider her answer, she holds her breath, waiting. “I suppose it would depend,” Tom says slowly.

She lifts her hand, as though she wants to touch Harry’s body where it lies against her chest—no palm between them this time.

Harry wishes she would.

She clears her throat. “Depends on what?”

“On whether there is a maiden looking to be stolen.”

Harry lets out her breath in a rush and feels briefly dizzy as she presses her cheek against Tom’s skin. There’s something about this—lying not in Tom’s palm but against her chest, beneath her collarbone and above the valley of her breasts, so close she could reach out and wrap her fist around the hair that hasn’t yet slid from her body to pool beneath her shoulders—it’s too much.

“Oh,” she says, and feels breathless.

Oh.

Tom does touch her, then. She presses two fingers to Harry’s back, and Harry wonders if she can feel her moving as she breathes, feels shaken by the care with which Tom’s fingers brush so gently over her body.

She wishes, suddenly and so fiercely it catches her off guard, that she wasn’t human.

If she wasn’t human, if she was big enough, she could hold Tom to her chest like Tom has so often held her. She could take Tom in her arms, run her hands through her hair and across her scales.

She could—

She digs her fingers into Tom’s skin, like she could hold on if she just tried hard enough, and wonders if Tom can feel it at all.

Five years ago, Harry left the Auror program with no warning but a letter of resignation and a floo call to Ron and Hermione’s flat to explain. The decision was far from easy, but it was quick. In spite of Hermione’s many efforts, Harry has never been one for meticulous planning or forethought when there's action to be taken instead. She knows herself better than she did five years ago, but of all the ways she’s changed, this is not one of them. 

Her mind is made up before she makes it back to the lodge.

Mr. Scamander— _Newt,_ she hears in his quiet voice, a memory of her first day at the lodge, _call me Newt—_ takes one look at her as she walks through the door and ushers her into his rarely used office.

“You aren’t surprised,” she says.

Newt smiles at her, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes crease deeper. She wonders if it’s truly possible that he’s grown to look even kinder with age. “I am not,” he confirms. “You have been a lovely addition to this sanctuary, and many lives have been made better by your work, but I knew from the start that this was not your place.”

“How?” Harry asks, because how can he be so sure about a question she’s struggled to answer since she read her Hogwarts letter for the first time, on the floor of a ramshackle hut in the middle of the sea, all those years ago.

It’s not fair.

“You remind me of myself,” he tells her.

And out of any answer he could have given, Harry supposes this is the best. She says, “You traveled your whole life before you settled here.”

“I did,” Newt says, and his smile now is wistful.

“So, you think…”

“I think you should do whatever it is that you want.”

She clutches at the armrests of her chair, feels remarkably unmoored as she admits, “I’ve never…”

“I know, dear girl.” Newt reaches out, takes her hand in his and squeezes gently, until she meets his gaze. “I made this place to offer a sanctuary for all creatures in need, to come and go as they will. It’s not a cage.”

Harry snorts, and it’s almost a laugh. “A bit heavy handed, Mr. Scamander,” she says.

He doesn’t correct her about his name. Instead, he only grins back at her. “Of all the creatures I’ve known,” he says, “human beings are among the most stubborn. I believe heavy handedness is sometimes necessary.”

Harry nods, and she feels oddly like crying.

She feels as though she’s leaving Hogwarts all over again, but she must admit, this farewell is far kinder. “So,” she says, clearing her throat as she takes back her hand, smooths her palms over her thighs, “I suppose this is goodbye—”

Newt laughs at her. “Goodbye?” he asks, shaking his head. “You say that like you’re leaving forever.”

“But—”

“Ms. Potter. _Harry.”_ His voice is stern, but he’s smiling. “You will always be welcome here. In fact, I must insist that you return someday, as I would like to speak to Tom again, should she ever be in the mood to indulge an old man.”

Harry lets out a breath, feels relief as a worry she didn’t even know she had is soothed away.

“I’ll tell her,” she says.

Tom will be pleased to hear it. Of all the people here—other than Harry, of course—she thinks Newt is her favorite.

“Good, good.” Newt claps his hands together then stands, gesturing toward the door. “Shall we tell our friends of your good news, then? They’ll be so excited for you. Hagrid has been practicing his baking, and I believe he’ll want to make a cake for the occasion.”

This time, when Harry laughs, she actually does cry.

But it’s only because her chest feels so full, so bright, that she can’t contain it all. “I’d like that,” she says, and she means it.

She’s going to miss them all so much when she goes—she’s going to miss everything.

Even Hagrid’s rock cakes.

The next day, Tom looks surprised to see her. “Speaker,” she drawls, not offering her hand. “I thought I’d scared you off.”

“Scared me off?” Harry echoes, and she wants to laugh at the idea. “As if you could.”

“Then why did you leave?”

“Because I wanted to see my friends,” she says, and it doesn’t hurt to think of, not now, “one last time.”

Tom’s eyes narrow. Her lips curl in the beginning of a snarl. “You’re leaving.”

“Well.” Harry frowns, hesitates. “I was hoping to.”

Has she been reading Tom wrong this entire time?

“I see.” Tom’s hands clutch at the earth, like she needs something to hold, and she turns her head away. “Don’t let me stop you.”

And, oh.

This time, Harry laughs.

Tom whirls to face her, teeth bared. “Is my pain so amusing to you?” she demands.

Harry raises her hands, shaking her head. “No, I swear,” she says, calming herself. “It’s just… I want to leave with _you.”_

Tom stares. “Oh,” she says, and Harry bites her lip to keep from laughing again as Tom preens, tossing her hair so it catches the light of the sun. “Well, of course you do,” she says, lifting her chin in the air to show off her profile. Her gaze darts Harry’s way, as if checking to make sure she’s watching. “I’m quite magnificent, you see. I knew you would.”

Harry grins. “Sure you did,” she says. Then, before Tom can protest, she says, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Will you take me with you?” she asks.

“What makes you think I’m leaving so soon?”

“‘However long it takes,’ you said.”

Tom sneers, but her pale cheeks—and her _ears_ Harry notes with delight—have begun to flush pink. When Harry doesn’t laugh at her again, the line of her shoulders, the set of her mouth, softens. “Where would you like to go?”

“Anywhere,” Harry says quickly. She wonders if she should be embarrassed about the speed of her response, then decides she doesn’t care to be. “Take me anywhere. I want to see everything.”

Tom grins, offers Harry her hand. As Harry steps onto her open palm, she wonders how she ever felt unsteady here in Tom’s hold.

"Then you shall."

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! find me on tumblr at [being-luminous](https://being-luminous.tumblr.com/)


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